A driver for Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports has never been the series points leader. Granted, it’s a little easier to lead the standings now that NASCAR doesn’t allow Cup drivers to earn points (that policy is in its third year), but it’s still a big deal. The best points finish for JRM, which is co-owned by Earnhardt and his sister, Kelley Earnhardt-Miller, was third in 2008-09 by Brad Keselowski.

Smith leads the standings by 27 points over Penske Racing’s Sam Hornish Jr., and the JRM No. 7 team is just nine points behind Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 54 team in owner points.

“I’m excited about their potential this year,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I told Regan, ‘You’ve got to minimize your mistakes to do well in the points over a long haul.’ If he does that, he will have a great opportunity of winning the championship.

“I feel like that a lot of those guys in that series, … some of them are young and they tend to make more mistakes than the experienced guys. If he can just keep his head on his shoulders — he has a bit of a temper sometimes — if he can just kind of keep that in check he has a great chance. He has got a good team around him.”

Earnhardt said Smith is driving hard and has talent. Smith won a Sprint Cup race in 2011 for Furniture Row Racing and won the Nationwide Series finale in his first race with JRM last year.

Smith’s success this year has been the result of the work done by him, crew chief Greg Ives (a former Jimmie Johnson engineer) and the rest of the crew. The addition of Ryan Pemberton as competition director last year has helped unify the organization, which also runs another full-time car and a third part-time car with Earnhardt, Kasey Kahne and others taking turns behind the wheel.

“They’ve been working so hard, so many late nights trying to get faster, trying to find that extra bit of speed that they need, trying to be as good as they can be,” Earnhardt said.

“You can really see the effort between Greg and the whole group in the shop during the week. There’s so much work they’re doing trying to learn, trying to gel as fast as they can because they know they have a great opportunity this year.”

The pairing of Smith and Ives has obviously worked well. Ives has hired several new people for the organization.

“We couldn’t be any luckier getting these two guys here to drive the car and work on the car,” Earnhardt said. “I’ve known Greg for a while and knew how much potential there was so it’s just great to see that come to a realization and see him be able to accomplish what he wants to. … We’ve been fortunate.

“I don’t know that I saw all that potential there when we were making all these changes. I was just hoping we were pulling the right levers and things were going to work out.”

Earnhardt said everyone has been working well together. Smith said that hard work has led to improvements.

“These guys have been working their butts off week in and week out,” Smith said. “As a team, it’s just been a steady progression. We feel like we keep getting better, keep getting better. … If we have something, even the smallest problem during the race weekend, we work to fix that.